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Almost everything I know I’ve learned from celebrities. After 20 years interviewing business leaders, Hollywood stars and global icons, here’s a selection of my all-time favorite quotations (culled from hundreds of my conversations) about success, happiness, inspiration, motivation and maintaining perspective on life’s ups and downs.
- “’May the Force be with you' is charming but it’s not important. What’s important is that you become the Force – for yourself and perhaps for other people.” – Harrison Ford
- “Many people don’t have the ability to be rich, because they’re too lazy or they don’t have the desire or the stick-to-itiveness. It’s a talent. Some people have a talent for piano. Some people have a talent for raising a family. Some people have a talent for golf. I just happen to have a talent for making money.” – Donald Trump
- “The secret to a happy marriage? Do whatever your wife tells you. ‘Yes, dear.’ And breathe.” – Denzel Washington
- “Stop chasing the money and start chasing the passion.” -- Tony Hsieh
- “What brought me into the TV business is what keeps me here and happy. You can learn something new every day if you have a really positive attitude.” – Katie Couric
- “I think the first half of my 20s I felt I had to achieve, achieve, achieve. A lot of men do this. I’m looking around now and I’m like, Where am I running?” – Justin Timberlake
- “You have a responsibility to your work, to your choices. Once you get to a certain level of quality and commitment, you don’t want to go back and make Booty Call 7.” – Jamie Foxx
- “When I was 15, I left school to start a magazine, and it became a success because I wouldn’t take no for an answer. I remember banging on James Baldwin’s door to ask for an interview when he came to England. Then I got Jean-Paul Sartre’s home phone number and asked him to contribute. If I’d been 30, he might have said no, but I was a 15-year-old with passion and he was charmed. Making money was always just a side product of having a good time and creating things nobody’d seen before.” – Richard Branson
- “As human beings we have unlimited potential and imagination. The worst thing you can do is be a conformist and buy into conformity. It’s the worst possible thing. It’s better to be outrageous. It’s better to hang out with the sages, the people open to possibilities, even the psychotics. You never know where you’ll find the geniuses of our society.” – Deepak Chopra
- “The idea is that one’s temperament improves with age; that you learn to deal better with people and become more benevolent and loving. That’s not necessarily true. I try to stay loose but sometimes the best thing to do is get yourself away and take a good nap.” – Robert Duvall
- “It’s cool to be a nerd. There’s a general understanding that smartphones didn’t come from jocks. The digital age was foreseen by a group of short-sleeved, buttoned-down, white-shirted guys and their female equivalents designing the very stuff that’s now ubiquitous.” – J.J. Abrams
- “If someone’s not attacking you that means you’re not doing your job effectively.” –Sean Hannity
- “Careers are here and they’re gone. No matter how great we think we are, we’re nothing but the temples of Ozymandias—we’re ruins in the making.” – William Shatner
- “I'm very glad my mother didn't let me quit piano lessons at age 10. She said I wasn't old enough or good enough to make that decision, and she was right. I remember at the time I was shocked. I did not like that my mother said those things to me. But when I got a chance to play with Yo-Yo Ma or more recently with Aretha Franklin, I thought, I'm really glad she said what she did.” – Condoleezza Rice
- “Why am I doing the work I’m doing? Why am I friends with this person? Am I living the best life I possibly can? Questions are often looked upon as questions of doubt but I don’t see it that way at all. I question things to stay present, to make sure I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.” – Joseph Gordon-Levitt
- “I never thought about heaven per se. I think when you’re dead, you’re dead. If anything happens after that, you just hope you don’t go to hell.” – Helen Thomas
- “This is the key to life: the ability to reflect, the ability to know yourself, the ability to pause for a second before reacting automatically. If you can truly know yourself, you will begin the journey of transformation.” – Deepak Chopra
- “There’s no such thing as overnight success. That’s my concern with a show like American Idol. It encourages the false belief that there’s a kind of magic, that you can be 'discovered.' That may be the way television works, but it’s not the way the world works. Rising to the top of any field requires an enormous amount of dedication, focus, drive, talent, and 99 factors that they don’t show on television. It’s not simply about being picked. Which, by the way, is why very few of the anointed winners on American Idol have gone on to true success. Most have flamed out and gone away. That should tell us something.” – Malcolm Gladwell
- “Beauty is no accomplishment on its own. It’s what you do with it.” – Padma Lakshmi
- “Customers should complain more. You know, food’s expensive nowadays. And these sommeliers come along with their thousand-page wine list and practically throw it in your lap. They’re all businessmen and know that customers get intimidated and buy something overpriced. I say, always put them on the spot. ‘You come back to me with a red wine at $30, $40. Come back to me with a choice.’” – Gordon Ramsay
- “I was blessed to look well and retain a youthful look but that was just genes. I was disappointed when critics started pointing out my wrinkles. I thought, you mean this is what it’s gonna be about now? I’m not going to be permitted to be human?” – Robert Redford
- “Hey, if I don’t have a job, I don’t know why I bother to get up. Any time the phone rings, I’m ready to go. What else am I going to do? See, I’ve never retired. I don’t even know what it means.” – Morgan Freeman
- “I want to be a jazzman until the day I die. To help keep that motion, momentum and movement going, for myself, for my students, for the people who hear me. Oh sure, some days you look around at this country and look at the evidence and think, Oh Lord, don’t look good. But you keep moving. You gotta keep moving.” – Cornel West
- “When I look at myself as a younger actor, I see what a tight ass I was. I had a pretty big shadow because of my father and the comparisons. I was self-conscious about that. Now I realize there was nothing to be worried about.” – Michael Douglas
- “Success is just a war of attrition. Sure, there’s an element of talent you should probably possess. But if you just stick around long enough, eventually something is going to happen.” – Dax Shepard
- “Yoga is the best thing for your sex life. It keeps you limber in all kinds of ways. It teaches you to love your body and your partner’s body. But more than anything, it keeps your mind liquid, and nothing’s sexier than that.” – Woody Harrelson
- “A lot of young actors have the idea that, “I’ve got to do this right. There’s a right way to do this.” But there’s no right or wrong. There’s only good and bad. And “bad” usually happens when you’re trying too hard to do it right. There’s a very broad spectrum of things that can inhibit you. The most important thing for actors – and not just actors, but everybody – is to feel loose enough to create what you want to create, and be free to try anything. To have choices.” – Robert DeNiro
- “Ignore the naysayers. Really the only option is, head down and focus on the job.” – Chris Pine
- “I used to live an isolated existence, even in relationships, but now my family knows me for who I really am. Mostly, that's a good thing." – Tim Allen
- “To tell you the truth, I never thought of myself as much of a success.” – Stan Lee
- “People ask, ‘What’s the best role you’ve ever played?’ The next one.” – Kevin Kline
- “When I was younger I'd berate myself: You're fat, you're not a good dancer, you'll never have a boyfriend. I don't sweat that kind of stuff anymore. Now every day is a miracle. I've also learned that if something is painful or upsetting, you shouldn't hide from it. You should make it part of your life instead.” – Valerie Harper
- “What have I done? I’ve blundered my way through life. So I have my picture on the wall. The minute I die, that picture will start to yellow and fade and eventually be gone. Blown in the wind and become part of the molecular structure of something else. These things we see as “success,” they’re non-accomplishments.” – William Shatner
- “When my oldest boy was about 14, I started to talk to him about some of the mistakes I made in life, just to put a few dents in that shiny armor.” – Denzel Washington
- “Being in the moment means not being distracted by the melodrama and hysteria around you. Present-moment awareness allows solutions to emerge.” – Deepak Chopra
- "It’s important to save your money. We need it for the long haul but too many Americans don’t save and don’t invest. It used to be that people would be proud of the fact that they were middle class. You’d have your church and buy a house and you had a car and everything else. Now, it’s really, really tough. Everybody has financial issues except for the one percent.” – Michael Douglas
- “Success on a cosmic level completely eludes me. I’m deeply suspicious of things being too good. It’s part of my superstition, I think, to generate pain in order to give the illusion of gain. I’m not saying I reject success, but honestly, I don’t quite know how to deal with it. It’s an old feeling: As soon as you have the thing you’ve been going after all your life, that reasonable degree of security, you start kicking against it, doubting it." -- Hugh Laurie
- “I think people sometimes don’t pay enough attention to what they do. I’ve done well, but the reason is pretty simple: I’ve worked my ass off. The toughest thing a performer can do is make it look as if it comes easy.” – Justin Timberlake
- “Daily meditation keeps me sane. I memorize prayers or poems that express my highest spiritual ideals, and quietly, word for word, go through the prayer first thing in the morning. Julian of Norwich or St. Francis or the compassionate Buddha. It’s called passage meditation. You internalize the perennial philosophies.” – Ashley Judd
- “Motherhood is given the brush-off in our society. ‘Oh, I’m just a mom,’ you hear women say. ‘Just’ a mom? Please! Being a mom is everything. It’s mentorship, it’s inspirational, it’s our hope for the future.” – Sally Field
- “The very wealthy and the very famous have a much closer affinity with the indigent street person than with the rest of us. There’s the narcissism, the addiction, even the outlandish dress. Often they don’t put great value in relationships.” – Dr. Drew Pinsky
- "There's an idea I came across a few years ago that I love: My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance and in inverse proportion to my expectations. That's the key for me. If I can accept the truth of ‘This is what I'm facing — not what can I expect but what I am experiencing now' — then I have all this freedom to do other things." – Michael J. Fox
- "I'm always trying to tackle subjects that tax me and make me think. That’s the key to staying young at heart. The brain has to be exercised the same as the rest of the body." – Clint Eastwood
- “I heard that someone asked Mother Teresa what was most important in her work. I thought she'd say the Rosary but she said, 'My nuns and I take very good care of ourselves so we can tend to the lepers and do whatever we need to assist.' If you're strong, or at least not hurting, you can inspire others.” – Valerie Harper
- “We're at a point in history where everyone needs to pay attention to politics. Too much is at stake for us to be apathetic.” – Kevin Costner
- "I always think if Dad climbed up out of the grave, he'd look at me and say, 'Kyle, you son of a bitch, why don't you get a real job?' But then he would look at the business side and say, 'Okay, I get it now.'" – Kyle Chandler
- “Success? I don’t know what that word means. I’m happy. But success, that goes back to what in somebody’s eyes success means. For me, success is inner peace. That’s a good day for me.” – Denzel Washington
- “I've been very lucky. All I wanted was to pay the rent. Then these characters took off and suddenly there were Hulk coffee mugs and Iron Man lunchboxes and The Avengers sweatshirts everywhere. Money's okay, but what I really like is working.” – Stan Lee
- “If you fall out of favor, you quickly stop being part of the conversation. But it can take one great project to turn things around. All you need is one hit or one great idea well-executed, and everybody’s talking about you again.” – Chris O’Donnell
- “My tombstone? I'm thinking something along the lines of ‘Geez, he was just here a minute ago.’” – George Carlin
Follow me on Twitter at @davidhochman and @letterfromLA
